Deacons: Servants of the Church

Deacons: Servants of the Church
Acts 6: 1 – 7.

I. Introduction.

Paul Powell, who recently retired as the Dean of Truett Seminary at Baylor University, served as pastor of several Baptist churches before he became Dean of the seminary. Powell tells a story of one Baptist Church that held an annual homecoming service. It was a really big deal with generations of people coming back home to participate in this worship service. It was the tradition for this church to select one active deacon every year to share a testimony in the homecoming service about one of the deacons who had passed away. One of Powell’s friends, a man named Jack Majors, was selected to share the deacon testimony one year. Jack had a very difficult time preparing what he wanted to say, so he sat down at dinner one evening and asked his wife for help. He asked her, “Honey, who are some of the dead deacons from our church?” His wife answered, “Well, Jack, you are a dead deacon.”

Reading that story reminded me of the first time I met with the deacons of my previous church in Mississippi. It was the weekend that my family went “in view of a call” so that the church could vote on us. I met with all of the active and inactive deacons in a Sunday School classroom. It was more than just a social visit. This was the opportunity for the deacons to ask me any questions that they wanted to know about me before I was presented to the church. They asked me about my testimony, my call to ministry, my philosophy of ministry and a bunch of other stuff. One of my favorite questions went something like this… “What are deacons supposed to do? This is my second time to be a deacon in this church, and nobody has ever told us what we are supposed to do.”

I do not want that to be the case at Lufkin’s First Baptist Church. I want everyone in our church to know what deacons are supposed to do. And let me brag for just a minute about what a good church we have. Our church polity and organization better fit the New Testament description of a church than any other church that I know of.

There are some churches that have adopted a kind of business-model in which the deacons serve as a kind of church “Board of Directors.” These churches often refer to their deacons as the “Board of Deacons.” And a Board of Deacons is really only good for one of two things, either they “rubber stamp” everything the pastor wants to do, or they “bottle neck” everything the pastor wants to do. This is not how the New Testament describes the work of the deacons.
There are some churches that think of their deacons in terms of government. We might think of these churches as if they were a kind of oligarchy—meaning that the church is ruled by a small group. In other words, the deacons are thought to rule the church.

In our church, the role of the deacon is to serve as ministers within the congregation. I hope you have noticed several months ago my attempt to make our deacons more visible. I asked Judie Baker to divide our entire church membership into 28 groups. We had 28 active deacons at that time, so we assigned each list of church members to one deacon. I then asked our deacons to start making phone calls to introduce themselves to our members and to tell them how well things were going at First Baptist and to ask if they had met our new pastor.

This was the first step in my plan to develop a deacon family ministry to help our church stay in better contact with all our members. I want our deacons to make at least two contacts per year with each family on their list. This will help us to learn about needs in our congregation so that we can respond.

There are several things our deacons learned through this process. Several of our deacons called church members and learned that these people had joined other churches, and the new churches never let us know. We also found out about people who had undergone surgeries that we did not know about. But most importantly, we learned that we did not have enough deacons to adequately care for the families in our church. (I never thought I would put these words together into a sentence…) We need more deacons!

This is the reason why we are welcoming our largest class of new deacons in recent memory. Seven new deacons will be ordained in our evening worship service tonight. I am excited about every man we will present to the church tonight. One reason I am excited is that a lot of these new deacons are young men who will help shape the future of our church.

Again, let me restate that our deacons do not serve as “business managers” or as “governors” in our church. Our deacons are ministers. This is the main reason why the selection of deacons is, and should always be, a spiritual decision. We should choose our deacons through a deliberate and prayerful process.

Our process begins in the month of May. We ask all our church members to nominate men to serve as deacons. Then, our deacon body forms a deacon nominating committee to interview the men who have been nominated. We do not select deacons based on their popularity. And we should not select deacons based on their church attendance.

Allow me to explain what I mean by this…Just because a man is in church every Sunday does not make him a good choice to be a deacon. But every man who is a good choice to be a deacon is a man who is in church. So, when it comes time to nominate deacons again next year and you are thinking about nominating someone, you better try to remember the last time you saw him in church before you nominate him…

The men that we choose to serve as deacons ought to be chosen on the basis of God’s calling and activity in their lives. This is why we ordain deacons. In ordination, the church is saying: “We want to set you apart as different. You are different, because we recognize that God is at work in your life.”

Throughout the history of the church, there has always been the practice of setting apart certain individuals…This practice began in the Old Testament with the Priests and Levites…When Moses first ordained the priests, he slaughtered a ram and took the blood and placed it on the right ear, the right thumb and the right big toe of the candidate…

Then there was the practice of anointing the king…Samuel as God’s prophet & priest poured oil on the head of the first three kings of Israel…This was probably a symbol of the presence of God through his Spirit…The oil was placed on the king’s head, and it covered his head, ran down his face and dripped off his beard…This covering of oil symbolized the covering of God’s Holy Spirit…

The New Testament describes 3 spiritual occasions for setting an individual apart…
1. Baptism…
2. Ordination of Ministers…
3. Ordination of Deacons…

Each of these is a symbol…There is nothing magical or mysterious about them…Baptism = Symbol of death, burial, resurrection of Jesus…Ordination = Symbol that the church recognizes God’s call & work in the life of the minister or the deacon…

As we end our deacon nomination process for this year and anticipate an ordination service tonight, let us look at the story of the first deacon ordination.

Read Acts 6: 1 – 7.

Scholars are in agreement that this text gives reasonable proof that the first church was actually a First Baptist Church…

1. The church was growing in numbers…
2. A complaint arose…

The complaint was a legitimate complaint. The Greek widows were not being taken care of as well as the Hebrew widows…

Some of you have probably been asking yourselves, “Where does that crazy preacher get the idea that this passage is about Deacon Selection? It never mentions the word Deacon.”…If that is what you have been thinking, then you are right…The English word Deacon never appears in this passage…However, the Greek word for deacon—diakonia—does appear three times.

Verse 1… diakonia = “distribution of food” (NIV)
Verse 2… diakonein = “to wait (on tables)” (NIV)
Verse 4… diakonia = “ministry (of the word)” (NIV)

In the NIV, the word for deacon is translated three different ways in three different appearances in this passage. The NASB is more consistent and uses forms of the word “service” to translate. (“serving”… “serve”… “service” [in the margin]…)


II. Deacons Are Assistants to the Pastor.

The 12 Apostles were working themselves to death trying to fill the role as pastors / ministers to the growing congregation. They were preaching, teaching, visiting, evangelizing, praying with the sick, conducting funerals, conducting weddings, giving food to widows…

Finally the ministers had an idea. The widows were right, that was an important part of the life & activity & ministry of the church. It is the kind of ministry Jesus performed while on earth. But it would not make sense for the rest of the church to suffer while the ministers spent all their time “waiting on tables.”

So they created a division of labor. The ministers would devote themselves to prayer and studying the word in order to preach and to spread the gospel more effectively. The deacons would take some of the work load off the ministers.

In other words, the deacons are to be assistants to the pastor…


III. Deacons Are Servants to the Congregation.

There is a specific work mentioned in Acts as the work of the deacon…I think the NIV captures it best… “It would not be right for us to neglect the word of God to wait on tables.”

The first deacons were set apart to be waiters…To serve food to widows and orphans in the church. In fact, did you know that is what the Greek word for deacon literally means…to serve, especially to wait on tables.

New Testament and Greek scholars do not give a lot of credence to what I am about to say, but it makes for good preaching. The Greek word “deacon” has two basic parts, dia = through and konos = dust. Some people believe that the idea behind the word is that one would literally stir up dust responding to the needs of others…

Does this mean that deacons should be nothing more than waiters, serving food to needy church members? NO!

It means the deacon is to be one who “stirs up dust,” doing whatever it takes to serve the genuine needs of the church…The Jerusalem church had a need for waiters, and the deacons met that need…

Of course there are two ways that church people can “stir up dust.” On the negative side, a person might “stir up dust” by spreading dirt and gossip about the church and church leaders. But that is not the job of a deacon. The deacon is supposed to “stir up dust” by doing whatever it takes to minister effectively within the church.


IV. Deacons Are Witnesses to the World.

Acts 6: 7 recorded a result that was directly related to the ordination of the first deacons: “…the word of God spread. The number of disciples in Jerusalem increased rapidly.”

How did they do this? 3 ways…

1. Lifestyle of ministry & service…

Demonstrated the love & life of Christ by placing their own needs behind the needs of the church… Love is meeting needs…


2. Allowed the pastors to focus more energy in preaching the word…

The Apostles’ preaching & evangelistic ministry was able to expand when the deacons began to help with the tangible acts of ministry…


3. United the church…

Notice how v. 1 focused on a church in conflict…Then v. 7 described that same church as a church united in purpose…

These 7 deacons united the church…They did NOT divide the church…

Have you ever heard of a deacon who took it upon himself to divide the church? Where do you think he got that idea? Was it from Acts 6? Was it from 1 Timothy 3? Was it from the Bible at all? NO!

One biblical role of the deacon is to unite the church, not to divide the church…
In other words, a deacon is supposed to put out fires, not to fan the fires or to start the fires…


V. Conclusion.

What is the difference between a pastor and a deacon? Not much difference. Both pastors and deacons are called to minister to the needs in the congregation and to unite the church for ministry in the world.

What is the difference between deacons and church members? Not much difference. We are all called to minister to the needs in the congregation and to unite the church for ministry in the world.